The weak border security allowing legions of illegal immigrants to sneak into the United States is also an open invitation to terrorists and criminal masterminds from around the world, Rep. Ted Poe says.
"Anybody can come. All the criminals who want to come into the United States, terrorists, just old-fashioned criminals,'' Poe, a Texas Republican, told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
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"The word is out the border is not secure," he said Tuesday. "The door is open to everyone, and we're going to find out probably that some bad folks came into the United States because they just walk across the border.''
Poe, vice chairman of the House Immigration and Border Security Subcommittee, said efforts by lawmakers to visit the overcrowded facilities housing thousands of immigrant children, many of them sick, are being thwarted by immigration officials.
"We don't know the total extent of the disease problem. The members of Congress [are] being prohibited from even interviewing these kids, these migrants,'' Poe said.
"We were invited to go to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, but under the condition you cannot talk to anybody, you cannot talk to the staff, you cannot talk to these people that are here.
"You can't take any photographs, no voice recording, you can't do anything except look around. What are they hiding? Why won't they let Congress see what has occurred on the border?''
Poe is also critical of President Barack Obama's decision not to visit the border with Texas Gov. Rick Perry while he is in the Lone Star State for Democratic fundraising events.
He says it is tantamount to President George W. Bush's slow response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster in 2005.
"It's just like Katrina, only ... I don't believe he does care and I don't think he's going to go see firsthand the problem that's occurring with the thousands of folks that are coming across the border,'' Poe said.
Poe also says the influx of immigrants is part of a grand plan hatched by the Obama administration.
"Now that these children, migrants, have come into the United States, many of them, I suspect, will never leave the United States because the whole system is geared to take care of them and then let them stay. That's my opinion of what the president's policy is,'' he said.
"All of the money the president wants Congress to spend to house all of these people and take care of their medical needs, he brought this on after his Rose Garden speech in 2012 when he talked about unilateral amnesty for unaccompanied minors coming to the United States.
"We're reaping what the president sowed in the White House Rose Garden in 2012.''
Poe suggested that instead of Congress appropriating from $2 billion to $4 billion toward the border problem, it should divert money being used to rebuild and secure Iraq.
"It's just as important that our country protect our border as it is to protect the borders of foreign countries,'' he said.
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